Grit In The Classroom Has To Be A Dialogue

The rush to grit is pretty intense, but so is the push-back. I’ve been writing about grit in articles and a book (Fostering Grit) and giving lots of presentations on the subject. I’ve spoken to schools and parents; presented at conferences; and have been a guest on NPR. Universally, grit is embraced. Everyone sees the merit in teaching our kids to accept challenges, step out of their comfort zones, and know how to respond to failure. So far, so good.

Grit is hanging in and never giving up, but it’s more than that. Grit is being comfortable when you are outside of your comfort zone, and it’s forging ahead when you hit the wall because you know that you’ll get up and continue moving forward. Grit is a life skill! But sometimes teachers are uncomfortable with the notion of fostering or teaching for grit. They’re uneasy with the role they must play and I get that. We went into education because we wanted to help students: we like it when they succeed and it gratifies us when our class is filled with smiles. When our kids do well, it tells us we’ve done a good job!

Some teachers say, “My students are already failing. I’m trying to help them succeed.” It’s hard to argue with that. Finally, others say that they see the need to do this, but their students’ parents won’t understand, and that’s a problem. Believe me, I hear these concerns. I’ve heard them from my faculty and I’ve had to work through them personally. But the more we think about why we need to foster grit, the clearer it becomes that the real disservice lies in not preparing our students for the future. It’s how we approach grit that is the key.

Fostering grit is a dialogue. It’s not something that we do to our students; rather, it is something that we do with them. An important part of fostering grit and teaching for it is being transparent to everyone – students, their parents, and the administration – about why this is necessary and what it takes to get there. No one would expect to get a good workout at the gym without sweating, and no one should expect to know how to handle adversity without experiencing it. Here are three ways to start the grit dialogue.

3 Ways to Start the Grit Dialogue

1. Grit should be in everyone’s vocabulary, talked about, written on the board, and mentioned in report cards

The goal is to have kids and their parents understand what grit is, why it is valuable, and to routinely use it in their conversations. Often on Mondays, I’ve had parents and kids make a point of telling me how much grit Susie or Jose displayed in a soccer or t-ball game over the weekend. That’s good!

2. We should consciously and visibly work toward grit with our students

Talking with the class about an upcoming “grit day” means that we work on this together. Not only do the students anticipate that the expectations and routines will be different, preparing for a “grit day,” gives us license to push and push and push some more. The students won’t like it, but they’ll understand our motivation and its benefit.

Too often we view scholastic success as our goal when, in reality, it should be the floor, not the ceiling. Our students need to master the academic content we teach but they also need to learn to learn, appreciate people who are different than they are, and to have grit when things are difficult. These are the life skills which will enable them to succeed.

I appreciate, also, that some kids come to school and struggle on a routine basis. They already experience frustration and failure. And probably because of that, they aren’t as resilient as they ought to be. Fostering grit for students who don’t expect to succeed begins with helping them focus on their strengths, breaking the tasks into small, achievable units, and then progressing one step at a time.

Teaching for grit means taking the long view, looking at the kinds of people we hope to develop, not simply the grades that our students will receive. Understanding the importance of grit and how we can foster it increases the likelihood that students and their teachers will succeed.

I’ve been trying to emphasize the importance of this in my district too- put this prezi together last spring

Kevin Hewitson

Grit and other learning requirements form part the skills, attitudes, attributes and behaviours that from part of the learning toolkit we as learners need to assemble. Like any toolkit there is a need to have a range available depending on the needs at the time. Our learning landscape is not fixed and this flexibility is part of a set of underpinning skills sometimes called “executive skills” needed to develop our learning strategies. Focusing on one and ignoring others can be as damaging as not having any in the first place. One size in education does not fit all and neither does one learning skill or behaviour suit all learning situations.

The key to me is to begin the dialogue about the learning environment and how to manage it to meet your own learning needs as soon as possible. There are a number of associated ideas, concepts and approaches that presently emerging almost independently of each other as we try to improve the process of learning and employ what we know about brain development etc. My approach is to bring all of these under one roof, to say that no is appropriate in all circumstances but that they should all be in the learner toolkit. I call this approach “Learning Intelligence” and define it as the ability to manage your learning environment to meet your own learning needs.

Whilst very young learners may not have reached the developmental stage where they can begin to take responsibility for managing their learning environment Learning Intelligence (LQ) provides the means by which we can start a learning dialogue and show how the learning environment can be managed.

My work is based on my own learning challenges, 35+ years of teaching and a great deal of reading of old and new theories and educational aithors. You can find over 30 articles about LQ and what it means for the learner as well as the teacher on my blog at 4c3d.wordpress.com. If you want a quick introduction to LQ then please visit: https://magic.piktochart.com/output/2297869-learning-intelligence